The present invention relates generally to the field of industrial incineration plants, and more particularly, is directed to a novel hazardous materials incineration system capable of incineration and destruction of a wide variety of materials in a safe and pollution controlled environment.
Prior workers in the art have designed and constructed numerous types of incineration systems suitable for handling both municipal wastes and industrial wastes. For example, Bruns et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,375, show an incineration system capable of handling combinations of solid, semi-liquid and liquid waste materials in a furnace to produce a combustible gaseous stream and then seek to achieve complete combustion in a second furnace to produce a non-combustible gaseous stream. In this system, the two effluents from the first and second furnaces are fed to an afterburner without the addition of auxiliary heat.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,548, Bolejack Jr. et al. show an incineration system for the disposal of hazardous materials such as explosives which includes a rotating kiln of the type having provision for the introduction of a burner in combination with an afterburner. The heated gases from the afterburner are treated in a precooler and in a wet scrubber prior to an exhaust to atmosphere.
In a plant particularly designed for the incineration of industrial wastes, Schuster in U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,162 shows a rotary furnace and an afterburner which receives the discharge from the furnace and which includes a heat exchanger to feed a steam generator. A flue gas washing apparatus is employed downstream of the steam generator to clean the flue gases prior to exhaustion into the stack.
Despite the considerable efforts in this field by the prior art workers, the need remains for an efficient, self contained, economical, integrated plant capable of the incineration of a wide variety and combination of waste materials, both liquid and solid, which may or may not contain toxic or otherwise hazardous ingredients by utilizing the apparatus components in various combinations to optimumly produce greater efficiency and most complete destruction in a pollution controlled manner.